Guys I have a severe problem and it's driving me crazy.
As soon as I get a good entry and everything looks like it's about to explode, I can't stay in. I would be so rich by now if I could just set a trailing stop and turn off the computer.
Can anyone help me keep from sabotaging my own success?
Any tricks, special chairs or mouse wheel, anything to get my mind off those delicious (but small) profits I can't stand leaving open?
I think I got this bad habit learning to trade on long options and very volatile small cap stocks, that give you about 30 seconds of opportunity to get out alive......
What should I do?
You are not cutting your winners, you are following the natural flow of events that the markets have designed, small gains which then turn in to evaporation of profits and then ideally in to depletion of capital. Stop concentrating on the large winners, one of the trading rules is stop worrying about perfect entry, stop worrying about perfect exit, and take the middle whatever it may be.
If you make 20 a day four days a week, an event will come along to evaporate 500 in hours or days, the key is to limit the losses for those events, not on daily routine losses, now we (used in the literal sense) have perfect entry scenarios which allow 10x profit to loss ratios and beyond, this is institutional grade so there is nothing to discuss here, the key being the markets are designed so that you don't make money and in most cases lose capital.
If your expectations are low, and I guarantee that is how most people make their profits, you can 'succeed' but I promise that is a long way from succeeding, a story was told of someone who had $300k invested and when asked what the return was she said 6%pa, inflation at that point was 2-3% and real inflation is double, but she was over the moon with the returns, her definition of success was 'breakeven'.
If you make 500, and lose 300, but keep 200 from a capital base of 100 then you have succeeded, if you make 1-2% every month you have a nice hobby, which for most that is what trading is, a distraction from the realities of life, the trick is keep the entry to stop spread small, and the profit spread larger, do this 100% of the time and you will exponentially profit, but human nature will not allow this so you need automation to do it for you because the one day you make a mistake, will be the one day you evaporate your monthly profits, or just have low expectations, low standards, with definition of success being mediocre, that works as well
